


not a love story

by fierceinferno



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hogwarts, M/M, Unrequited Love, between theo and draco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 07:38:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14492064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fierceinferno/pseuds/fierceinferno
Summary: you look at him, he looks at you. his eyes are fearful and familiar, grey mirroring yourself back at you. you love him, you love him, you love him.





	not a love story

this is not a love story. 

it's fourth year and you’re sitting on the edge of the lake. your hand skims the water and the moon shifts and ripples under your fingertips. he sits down next to you, arms draped over knees. he sits and you can’t breathe. 

‘he’s back’ you say, words clawing their way up your throat. 

‘he’s back’ he says. calm, always calm, except when he’s not.

you wonder if he thinks it’s a good thing, if he’s revelling in the glory of the renaissance. you wonder if you want to be him or pin him down and take him. 

you look at him, he looks at you. his eyes are fearful and familiar, grey mirroring yourself back at you. you love him, you love him, you love him. 

you do not kiss. that’s not something you do, you and him. but gods, it could be. 

he breaks contact first, pulling out his wand and sending something red and violent skittering across the lake. the moonlight shudders at his raw power and so do you. 

you memorize the line of his clenched jaw and shards of his hard eyes and you can tell that he’s scared. he’s scared and he’s mad with it. you could always read him like the books you put in place of people. except him. you’ll never stop reading him. 

*

it’s fifth year and your slytherins are all sitting on the grounds. his head is in pansy’s lap and she’s carding her fingers through his white blonde strands. it would bother you, but you know it’s just for the sake of appearance. he never looks at her the way he looks at you. 

you open your book and blaise makes fun of you for reading after OWLs are over. the teasing rolls off of you like the gentle june breeze. you never cared much about what they all said about you. all except one. 

but his smile is a shutter instead of the window it used to be. you can feel him locking his doors and casting his wards. you want to pound your fists on the hard planes of his chest and demand to be let in again, because now you’re left outside in the cold.

he’s trying so hard, you can tell. to be strong, to be unaffected, to be the eye of everyone else’s storm. you wish he’d stop, that he’d just scream in the great hall the way he does in his sleep. you like him better that way, dignified and true. 

moments like this, though, where you’re looking at him and he’s looking at you and the world has a silencing charm cast over it. you live for this, his expression a potion you’ve become dependent on. you can almost feel it on your lips.

you don’t kiss. it’s not what you do, and you’re starting to lose hope that it ever will be. 

*

it’s sixth year and you’re sitting at the edge of a bed in the hospital wing. next to him, always next to him. 

the unforgiving moonlight plays across his pallid face, casts morbid shadows under his eyes and in his cheeks and you wish the sun would come back so he wouldn’t look so exposed, especially in this state of peaceful, potion-induced sleep. 

you push a lock of limp hair back off of his face, something in you wanting to restore the former pride of his features. he stirs and wakes, eyes locking with yours. he looks exhausted in a way that sleep can’t fix and you can’t fix and it kills you a little bit. 

‘theo’ he says, and you revel in it. theotheotheo. he says it with a barely perceptible french inflection, like his mother taught him when you first met ten years ago. you never want to hear anyone but him say your name for the rest of your life, however short that might be. 

‘i don’t know what to do. i’m in love with him’ he says, voice breaking like the tide. 

you haven’t heard his voice like this in a long time, these days so quick to spit vitriol than sow sadness. 

you can feel your heart fracturing, tearing up your lungs and you wonder if he has any idea what he’s doing to you. 

you knew, of course. whenever you’re looking at him (more often than you’d care to admit), he’s always seeking a particular combination of raven black and fiery green. avada kedavra green.

to anyone else it would look like animosity, like vengeance. to you, it looks like a passion that dissolves the thin line between love and hate. you never were a fighter, but the way they fight makes you wish you were. 

and now here he is, his wounds trying to stitch themselves back together over his torso, the name of their inflictor spilling from his lips like blood. 

you also know something he doesn’t. you know harry is in love with him, too. gryffindors, as quick as they are to defend their honor and their friends, often forget to shield their feelings. 

you hold his hand, tell him everything will be okay, even though it already isn’t, and for you it never will be. 

you don’t kiss. your chest pounds for what you can never have, not now. 

because this is not your love story.


End file.
